Do I go for AMD or stick with Pentium 3??

[Guest]

hi

i am in the procees of upgrading my comp - i have got the new graphics card - 64MBDDR GF2 GTS Pro. i now need to upgrade my mobo - i was wondering wether it would be best to stick with my P3 866mhz and get a socket 370 mobo and have no upgrade path in terms of processors or go for a Athlon 1.4Ghz or sumthing and get a socket A mobo so in the furture i can go to a better processor or sumthing - i have worked out that it wont cost any more to get the 1.4 GHZ Amd after selling my P3.

I mainly play games and online games as well as the odd net surf.

i have 256MB ram and play mostly FPS shooters and occaionly the odd RTS or RPG.

thanx for any help
bye

 

[dhlucke]

You have an 866 MHz PIII and you feel that you need to upgrade? For games that won't be necessary.

If you do want to spend the time selling your PIII though you can feel free to buy an athlon board and a 1.4 Ghz T-bird, but you won't notice much of a difference in games. Nonetheless it might be a decent move since the PIII is dead and the socket-a isn't.

I might be reading you wrong though. Do you have the processor but no motherboard?

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[bront]

If you're going to upgrade to an AMD chip from that system, I'd make sure I got an XP 1600+ minimum. Longer lifespan on the chip due to it's speed increases, SSE implementation, and general design. Not to mention it's less heat than the T-bird 1.4 for the same or better clock speed.

It probably won't make that much of a difference in games (I went from an athlon 750 to an Athlon 1600+ and didn't get more than a 25% increase in D3D framerate play, though my rates were a bit more consistant) to upgrade from your current system, but other apps will gain a lot out of it, and you will have a viable upgrade path.

486/SX 25 @ 256. Anyone have any dry ice to cool down the system?

 

[Kelledin]

Honestly, if you're just planning to play games and such, the P3 you've got is fine. P4s and Athlons above 1GHz are only really useful if you're doing the sort of jobs that take hours and are mainly CPU-bound.

Kelledin
<A HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/" target="_new">LFS</A>: "You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn; you just hack your distro all day long."

 

[Era]

For example when you play at 1024x768 resolution,it's mostly the graphics card that sets the speed(fps),not your cpu.
With a 866 P3 you should be fine for a year.
I know only one game(F1 2001),where you might need a faster a cpu.

 

[Matisaro]

But if it will not cost him any money when he sells his p3, he may as well upgrade anyway.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[Guest]

yeah thanx for the info so far

i see what u r al saying but i if i get a socket 370 mobo i will have to change that again (thats 2 mobgo changes) in about 6 months time when i will need to change the processor to keep up with the games coming out then - DNF, Doom 3 etc

another question - so if i buy athlon (obviously running with 266FSB - double pumped 133mhz) i wont be able to run it at that because of my ram - is that right??? if i were to stick with the same ram - what speed would a athlon 1.4GHz run at??

thanx again so far and keep those posts rolling!

 

[Matisaro]

Your ram can most likely overclock to 133 if you go to cl3, if not ram is dead cheap right now.

20 bucks for 256 megs ddr.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[lhgpoobaa]

that 133/266 fsb only refers to the system bus being double pumped, not necessarily the ram.

there are a considerable number of mature SDRAM athlon/duron motherboards out there that u can use your ram on.

some motherboards u can even use both types (but not at the same time)

an athlon with sdram is definately not sluggish by any means, and are still sold in quantity.
but ddr is the future so it might be better getting a ddr system and ddr ram... ram, any ram, is at an all time low right now. very affordable.

OEMs selling "High End"PCs with integrated video will be forced into Q3tournaments using a TNT2M64!

 

[AMD_Man]

An Athlon system with SDRAM is within 5% of the performance of an AMD760 with an Athlon and DDR RAM.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Matisaro]

It is more like 10% and it depends heavaly on the chipset. However the amd 760 is no where near the fastest ddr chipset out now, that crown would go to nforce which by some benchmarks I have seen is hitting 20% faster than the amd 760, which makes it 25%-30% faster than sdram.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[lhgpoobaa]

but sdram is far from obselete
or slow

specially overclocked to 150mhz

OEMs selling "High End"PCs with integrated video will be forced into Q3tournaments using a TNT2M64!